There's an old joke about an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman and a Pole being asked to write an essay about an elephant. The Englishman wrote about hunting the elephant, the Frenchman described the love life of the elephant, the German waxed on about the elephant's use as a war machine, and the Pole traced the history of the elephant's relationship to the Polish question.

This joke came to mind when I was told that less than one hour after Scott Morrison emerged from an August 24 Liberal Party meeting as prime minister-elect, a senior Chinese official rang one of Australia's most distinguished China watchers and blurted out words to the effect of: "What does this mean for China's relations with Australia?"

Well, at one level not much because Morrison's immediate priority is political survival. Operating on a notional razor-thin majority of one, he faces a challenging byelection four weeks away in Malcolm Turnbull's old electorate of Wentworth, a revolt by several female Liberal MPs against internal bullying and intimidation, and increased Liberal Party factional tensions in NSW in the wake of Turnbull's ouster from The Lodge.

Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye. China hopes the Morrison government will 'rekindle the mutually beneficial relationship' between the two countries. Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Media

It's not surprising, therefore, that the political and media focus is largely on the domestic here and now. Behind the scenes, however, there are tentative signs of a thaw in Australia's crucial relations with China. This is after 18 months of ties being in the deep freeze, although in the last weeks of the Turnbull-led government there were moves for a "reset".

The new Foreign Minister, Senator Marise Payne, tells AFR Weekend she hopes to meet her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York during the coming week. Further, Payne is well advanced with plans to attend a revived Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue meeting in China "once suitable dates are agreed". According to the minister's office, this should be some time this year.

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It's also on the cards that Morrison will be visiting Beijing before the end of this year. There is a flurry of activity on this matter currently under way in Canberra. No formal announcement has been made, but, as one member of the PM's press office put it: "There's no reason why he's not going."

Meanwhile, in coming months the political focus will switch to the region, and further abroad, as Morrison attends an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Port Moresby in November and soon after a G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Also expected at both gatherings will be Chinese President Xi Jinping. US President Donald Trump will skip the APEC summit but will be at the G20 confab.

Morrison invited President Trump to visit Australia after the APEC gathering, and an East Asia Summit in Singapore, in their first phone conversation the day after he became prime minister, but Trump will be travelling to France instead to attend the ceremony marking 100 years since the end of World War I on November 11, 1918.

Strategic partner

One day after the Trump-Morrison phone call, China's Global Times newspaper speculated whether Morrison would "tread the same path that would take (China-Australia) relations to a new low or rekindle the mutually beneficial relationship that has been contributing to the economic success of both countries in the past decade".

It seems likely that Prime Minister Scott Morrison will visit China before the end of the year. Alex Ellinghausen

Answering its own question, and acting as a sort of editorial kite flier for the ruling Chinese Communist Party Politburo, the Global Times said Morrison would "hopefully break the diplomatic ice by visiting China as Australia's new prime minister". However, the paper also warned it "would be extremely unwise to exacerbate hostility and stoke rancour toward China, which has been Australia's strategic partner".

"Hostility" and "rancour" are suitable words to describe the rapidly escalating US-China trade war. In July-August, Trump imposed tariffs on $US50 billion in Chinese goods entering the US, and Beijing retaliated in kind. This month Trump announced 10 per cent tariffs on an additional $US200 billion ($277 billion) in Chinese exports and on Tuesday Chinese officials responded by imposing the same tariffs on $US60 billion in US exports. The disparity in numbers reflects the huge trade imbalance between the two countries.

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This latest round of US tariffs will start in a few days, but by January 1 next year – and barring any breakthrough – they will increase to 25 per cent. Doubling down once again, on September 17, Trump threatened additional tariffs on $US267 billion more of Chinese exports. This new figure accounts for the rest of the $US500 billion-plus of annual Chinese exports to the US.

The dimensions are admittedly much greater, but this is the sort of trade war that APEC – the brain child of Professor Ross Garnaut when he was an adviser to Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke – was designed to deal with; that is, Pacific-region trade and economic issues. It is a reflection on how much the world has changed since APEC emerged in the late 1980s that Pacific-area trade issues then revolved around US-Japan relations; China was not even considered.

There will be a new face at APEC this year ... Australia's then PM Malcolm Turnbull took a selfie with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at APEC 2017.

Fears of slump

As alarm grows about the US-China trade war triggering a global slump, the idea of Australia playing any role in securing a compromise may seem far-fetched. "Punching above our weight" doesn't get anywhere near the ambition and reach required for such a task. For Australia to play any part in securing a breakthrough between the world's two biggest economies would mean at the very least acting in concert with key Asia-Pacific regional players, and fellow APEC members, such as Japan, South Korea and Indonesia, and there is no sign, so far, of this happening.

Further, not only will Trump be a no-show at the APEC meeting in Port Moresby and the planned East Asia Summit in Singapore, but eight years of party room putsches against sitting prime ministers in Canberra – or, as the BBC described it, "the coup capital of the democratic world" – means a non-existent local appetite for any major Australian foreign policy-cum trade initiative.

In addition, the closer one looks at the US-China trade war the more intractable it seems. For the US it's not just about the mother of all trade deficits, but what the Trump administration regards as the Chinese theft of US technology, plus the walling off of whole sections of the Chinese economy from foreign involvement. The trade war is in effect one part of a gargantuan struggle for supremacy between the world's No. 1 economic and military power, and – as far as the Asia-Pacific region at least – the would-be successor.

New Foreign Minister, Senator Marise Payne, hopes to meet her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York during the coming week. Alex Ellinghausen

On the Chinese side is "President for Life" Xi Jinping, committed to programs such as the $1 trillion-and-counting global infrastructure plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Made in China 2025 plan for global pre-eminence in artificial intelligence, driverless cars and other high-tech areas.

The bottom line for the Morrison-led government, however, is that there's no alternative but to look beyond Canberra's political games and engage an open-trading economy such as Australia in the events reshaping such a fast-changing world.